Does Digital Transformation Mean “Winner Takes All!”?
Does Digital Transformation Mean “Winner Takes All!”?
  • Prof. Sangman Han(smhan@skku.edu)
  • 승인 2022.06.24 23:50
  • 댓글 0
이 기사를 공유합니다

Prof. Sangman Han (SungKyunKwan University), President of Korea Academic Society of Business Administration
Prof. Sangman Han (SungKyunKwan University), President of Korea Academic Society of Business Administration

The corona pandemic has brought about tremendous change and a renewed sense of reality that we often refer to as the New Normal. There is a new urgency concerning the sustainable development of mankind we haven’t felt before.

Humanity is now looking for ways to navigate the new normal for growth and development and not merely growth-oriented development.

At the same time, the corona pandemic has further deepened social polarization around the world, bringing much greater suffering to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) than large enterprises, and to the small-scale self-employed compared to large retailers. If the corona pandemic continues, small business owners and self-employed people in particular will face the problem of survival itself.

Meanwhile, the corona pandemic has sped up the digital transformation in our society at a rate of 10 times faster than prior to the pandemic. Online commerce has taken its hold at the center of the world, and all of our daily lives, from telecommuting to online meetings and digital assets, are experiencing a new normal, another new way of experiencing the digital transformation 10 years earlier than we might have had there been no pandemic.

The gap between large enterprises, SMEs, and small businesses in the digital transformation has also widened enormously with the corona pandemic. Most small business owners who were experiencing conditions at the pre-COVID level are suddenly being overwhelmed as we attempt to return to our daily lives, and are completely unprepared for the digital tsunami facing us all.

No one doubts that the era of digital transformation in the future will be the era of AI and platforms. When we talk about the platform economy, there is a phrase that comes to mind: “Winner Takes All!” This phrase evokes fear in the heart of many companies preparing for digital transformation. In a winner-take-all world, second place is meaningless.

Uber, Airbnb, and Amazon, for example, may complacently nod. Uber's enterprise value is said to be 70-80 trillion won. The corporate value of Airbnb is known to be equal to the sum of the corporate value of the world's three largest hotel chains. ‘Winner Takes All!’ holds true too for all companies at large.

According to a recent McKinsey study, the profit margins of companies in the top 20% of digital maturity are 3.9 times that of companies in the bottom 80%. Companies that are lagging behind in the digital transformation show that sustainable growth is impossible for them.

Investing in AI is something that can only be imagined as a pie in the sky for SMEs and small business owners. If a small business owner were to say that he was preparing for the new era of digital transformation by building his own AI, those around him would say that he was crazy.

But this raises an important question. Is this era of digital transformation only for the top 20%? Is the digital economy represented by AI and platforms a world where small business owners can only survive by selling products on platforms such as Coupang, Kakao, and Naver? Can't everyone have access to AI and their own platform? The conditions we find ourselves in in the aftermath of the corona pandemic, the new normal, demand a new way for growth and development. What is this new way?

Many scholars say that the Web 2.0 economy is a centralized platform economy as exemplified by companies such as Uber, Airbnb, and Amazon, while the Web 3.0 economy will be an open autonomous platform economy. Such an economy, were it to become the new normal, does not have to be a winner-takes-all world where the winner takes everything, but a world where everyone can grow and prosper together.

The new normal can be a brave new world in which large corporations, SMEs, and small businesses prosper together. A world where anyone can enjoy various life benefits using AI, do business with such AI, and participate as agents in the platform economy. If such a world comes to be where everyone can share in the platform and everyone have access to AI, the window of opportunity will be open to everyone, allowing us to overcome the old world of 'Winner Takes All!' The new catchphrase of this new economy could be “Opportunities for All!”

In the world of the AI Sharing Platform, where everyone can share AI, data will no longer be the exclusive property of one company, but a resource shared by everyone. An AI sharing platform does not mean sharing people's personal data, but sharing intelligence about data. We look forward to the future where Korea leads the era of ‘Opportunities for All!’, where new business opportunities are open to everyone by sharing AI. Just as anyone can use the Internet without restrictions, if everyone can get equal access to data through shared platform access to AI, we can look forward to a truly new way of re-creating capitalism.
 


댓글삭제
삭제한 댓글은 다시 복구할 수 없습니다.
그래도 삭제하시겠습니까?
댓글 0
댓글쓰기
계정을 선택하시면 로그인·계정인증을 통해
댓글을 남기실 수 있습니다.

  • ABOUT
  • CONTACT US
  • SIGN UP MEMBERSHIP
  • RSS
  • 2-D 678, National Assembly-daero, 36-gil, Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul, Korea (Postal code: 07257)
  • URL: www.koreaittimes.com | Editorial Div: 82-2-578- 0434 / 82-10-2442-9446 | North America Dept: 070-7008-0005 | Email: info@koreaittimes.com
  • Publisher and Editor in Chief: Monica Younsoo Chung | Chief Editorial Writer: Hyoung Joong Kim | Editor: Yeon Jin Jung
  • Juvenile Protection Manager: Choul Woong Yeon
  • Masthead: Korea IT Times. Copyright(C) Korea IT Times, All rights reserved.
ND소프트